Forbes On Pastor Ted Haggard's Dark and Repulsive Side...

Story here - and it doesn't even address Teddy Bare's sex and methamphetamine (and possibly other drug) use. ::wink::

Your Vote Is Your Voice

Speak loudly tomorrow.

It's Shocking! Just Shocking, I Tell You!

I know you will find this hard to believe if you're in the 28% of the country willing to swallow cyanide for our beluffed leader, but Mr. Bush's approval (if you call just 35% or less approval) has dropped again.

No wonder Dick Cheney is taking his gun to go hunting on Election Day. He's hoping to bag a Bernie Sanders, a Jim Webb, a Harold Ford, a Tammy Duckworth or Michael J. Fox or maybe even a Kerry.

Someone, Please Shoot Me! Put Me Out Of My Misery!

Well, figuratively speaking (at least, for right now; if this continues another 24 hours, I may reconsider and rebroadcast this as a literal appeal).

Yesterday, I was really having a great day humming a song a friend had written and sang at my home on Saturday night.

However, Tonio on WGDR in Plainfield yesterday played, "Dick Cheney, He's Zany, The Sexiest Man Alive." Unfortunately, it was buzzing my brain all late yesterday and I awoke this morning STILL hearing it.

And yet it continues.

Let's Be Clear About The Saddam Hussein Verdict

A few people have tried to tear me a new one because I voiced my displeasure about the Saddam verdict. But never did I say that I felt Saddam was innocent (that would be like my saying that George Bush's and Dick Cheney's travesties are innocent). Take note of the next paragraph especially (another good read on this is JurassicPork's at Welcome to Pottersville):

When I rail about the verdict and the timing of Saddam's death sentence, it's to be very clear. This is fact, not fiction. The entire Saddam trial in Iraq was at the pleasure of the Bushies.

1. The Bush Administration ordered Iraq to try him
2. The Bush Administration told the Iraqi "justice" system what charges to level against Saddam
3. The Bush Administration set the time schedule for it
4. The Bush Administration set the verdict to be announced just before the mid-term election

The only fact I cannot prove from information currently available (since the rest is record) is that the Bush Administration told Iraq well ahead of time to find Saddam guilty and to order his death by one of the more gruesome measures possible. But given the above list, can there be any doubt that we, as in the Bushies, set this up, too?

As for "feeling sorry for Saddam", please. My sympathies are to the Iraqi people - who, like the Afghanis and what we've done to Central Asia - did not deserve Saddam, certainly did not deserve how George Bush Sr. told them to rise up against Saddam only to leave these people to be tortured and executed since Bush I cut and ran. And these people did NOT deserve what we have done to them in the Bush II Endless War & Occupation TV Carnivale.

Saddam was, is, and always will be in history a terrible man. Unfortunately, Saddam Hussein was a terrible man frequently propped up by the U.S. government and by corporations like Cheney's Halliburton, Poppy Bush's oil associates, and Rummy's Bechtel. So my outrage is not just at Saddam but all these others.

Hell, the much-discussed massacre of Kurds? We - as in American corporations with the full pleasure of Washington D.C. - fucking well sold Saddam the nerve gas agents to do it! Personally, I think there are plenty of people including Cheney, Poppy Bush, Rumsfeld, and others who should go on trial as well.

Frank Rich: "Throw The Truthiness Bums Out"

I'll second that vote - as well as hope no one ever publishes another Lynne Cheney "novel". Here's a bit of Rich but go here for the rest:

Each voter will have a favorite moment from the fabulous midterms of 2006. Forced to pick my own, I’d go for Lynne Cheney’s pre-Halloween slapdown of Wolf Blitzer on CNN. It’s not in every political campaign that you get to watch the wife of the vice president of the United States slug it out about lesbian sex while promoting a children’s book titled “Our 50 States: A Family Adventure Across America.”

The pretext for this improbable dust-up was a last-ditch strategy by the flailing incumbent Republican senator of Virginia, George Allen. Desperate to resuscitate his campaign, Senator Allen attacked his opponent, Jim Webb, for writing sexually explicit passages in his acclaimed novels about the Vietnam War. Mr. Webb fought back by pointing out, among other Republican hypocrisies, Mrs. Cheney’s authorship of an out-of-print 1981 novel, “Sisters,” with steamy sexual interludes suitable for “The L Word.”

When Mr. Blitzer brought up “Sisters” on live television, Mrs. Cheney went ballistic, calling Mr. Webb a liar. The exchange would have been a TiVo keeper had only the CNN anchor called Mrs. Cheney out by reading aloud just one of the many “Sisters” passages floating around the Internet: “The women who embraced in the wagon were Adam and Eve crossing a dark cathedral stage — no, Eve and Eve, loving one another as they would not be able to once they ate of the fruit and knew themselves as they truly were.” But you can’t have everything.

Even without Eve and Eve, this silly episode will stay with me as a representative sample of this election year. It wasn’t just that the entire Cheney-Blitzer-Webb-Allen fracas had nothing to do with the issues that confront the country. It was completely detached from reality. Mr. Allen, who has been caught on video in real life spewing a racial epithet, didn’t attack Mr. Webb for any actual bad behavior, but merely for the imaginary behavior of invented characters in a book. As if it weren’t enough for Mrs. Cheney to regurgitate Mr. Allen’s ludicrous argument, she fudged the contents of her own novel, further fictionalizing what was fiction to start with. Then she turned around and attacked CNN for broadcasting nonfiction — a k a news — like her husband’s endorsement of waterboarding in a widely disseminated radio interview.

The incessant shell game played with fiction and reality turned this episode of Mr. Blitzer’s program, “The Situation Room,” into a sober inversion of Comedy Central’s “Colbert Report,” in which Stephen Colbert’s satirical Fox-style TV blowhard interviews real-life politicians. Here the interviewer, Mr. Blitzer, was real, but the politician, Mrs. Cheney, was bogus, shamelessly making everything up and hoping her playacting would make her outrageous fictions credible. Maybe in some precincts it did.

The 2002 midterms were ridiculed as the “Seinfeld” election — about nothing — and 2006 often does seem like the “Colbert” election, so suffused is it with unreality, or what Mr. Colbert calls “truthiness.” Or perhaps the “Borat” election, after the character created by Mr. Colbert’s equally popular British counterpart, Sacha Baron Cohen, whose mockumentary about the American travels of a crude fictional TV reporter from Kazakhstan opened to great acclaim this weekend. Like both these comedians, our politicians and their media surrogates have been going to extremes this year to blur the difference between truth and truthiness, all the better to confuse the audience.

But there’s one important difference. When Mr. Colbert’s fake talking head provokes a real congressman into making a fool of himself or Mr. Baron Cohen’s fake reporter tries to storm the real White House’s gates, it’s a merry prank for our entertainment. By contrast, the clowns on the ballot busily falsifying reality are vying to be in charge of our real world at one of the most perilous times in our history.

Another SwiftBoatBush Move in Iraq As Saddam Soars In Popularity

You really have to hand it to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Rove, Negroponte et al.

No. No sarcasm here. This - despite its entire error - could only be accomplished by one group of people, singularly so ego driven, so propelled by bullshit and so intent on not listening to ANY of the facts, conventional wisdoms or even smart guesses by their assistant dolts on Capitol Hill.

Only they could have taken us through going on four (count 'em) years in Iraq from a time when if most people were pleased about any part of the Bush invasion in Iraq, it was that Saddam was no longer in power. And then they bring us to the point after more than $350 Billion (that's a B as in White House Bastard or Bitch) to the unmistakable fact than even flippin' Fox News has trouble shooting any video without an Iraqi begging for Saddam to return to take control from the Bushies!

So how can we be surprised that news of Saddam's sentence to death by hanging has riled Iraqis like mad, and the Rumsfeld bullshit move of curfews still left a LOT of people dead. While some among the Shiites and Kurds rejoice, Sunnis say to expect thousands to die in retaliation in the coming days. Didn't matter that the Bushies knew of the additional horror in Iraq because Bush Cheney and Rummy wanted a death sentence delivered on the weekend news cycle of Tuesday's mid-term elections.

How can anyone - let alone a whole capitol building of them - be so wrong, each and every time? Unless the point was to turn not just Iraq but the U.S. itself into chaos and where perhaps the leisure class of Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Hannity, Scarbrough, Glenn Drecker.. Beck can cry out again and again for the great mastahs at 1600 Pennsylvania to do whatever it takes to make the fat old rich white guys safe while everything else just falls.

That sounds strangely like... oh... what's that word. Oh, wait. Treason.

Passionate Call For Change in America

From Chuck at BushMeriKa2.

The Army Times Editorial: "Time For Rumsfeld to Go"

You can read the full editorial in Army Times here in which they call for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's resignation or termination.

(Can we just send him to one of those secret Bush tribunals after we try Bush for treason?)

Election Polls

TPM Cafe - brought to you by the same fine folks at Talking Points Memo - offers a comprehensive, up-to-the-minute rundown of key election polling through theBush SerfdomUnited States.

There is also TPM Muckraker.

When We Go To War With The Troop Levels Rumsfeld Wanted Rather Than The Troop Levels Needed

As you likely now know, the U.S. conducted war games in 1999 (code name: Operation Desert Crossing) - hell, they do them all the time now - specifically to determine what troop level would be needed if we ever did need to go into Iraq.

Guess what! It was determined that a minimum of 400,000 troops would be needed in Iraq to occupy long enough for a changeover from the regime of Saddam Hussein.

In March 2003, Bush and Rumsfeld chose to enter Iraq with less than 25% of that number. Today, we have about 140,000, which is far more than were there for the first year or so as things (as in life, safety) devolved exponentially there.

Mistake? More like treason and war crimes, to me. Seriously, after awhile, the "oops, my bad" - and hell, they never admit that much - excuse gets a tad old.

With that said:

A vote for the current GOP on Tuesday is, to me, tantamount to a vote to go to war with Iran (Iran just finished conducting massive war games of its own to prepare for a U.S. invasion). And not even 400,000 troops would make a dent in Iran. In fact, we don't have a military large enough for a ground invasion of either Iran or North Korea.

In other words, vote GOP and you better be prepared to give your sons and daughters, grandchildren, mothers and fathers (Rummy takes them well past 50 these days for Iraq duty), friends and neighbors to the Bush Cycle of Never-Worn Wars.

Now That Pastor Ted Haggard Is An Ex Reverend If Not An Ex Meth User or Purveyor of Male Prostitutes...

"Resignation" here, but you will also learn that the Bushies - who were balls out (oops, perhaps an unfortunate choice of words with Teddy Bare - mea culpa, mea maxima culpa) thrilled to have Ted participate at least weekly on how to hold government and the American people hostage to the evangelicals' flavor of religion - now can't remember ole Ted's name. But apparently they needed to remove this person from the White House love list - which seems to imply Bush & Rove knew him.

For a crew so famed (by a lapdog media) for its loyalty, the Bushies certainly cut and run on their friends at least as fast as their enemies.

They Say a Laugh Is Good For You

Yup, health experts say a good laugh is the best, because it:

• lowers blood pressure
• relieves tension
• strengthens abdominal muscles

With this in mind, a Three-For-Two-For starring such popular favorites: The "Right" Pastor Ted Haggard ("I didn't swallow!) and "Mellow" Mel Gibson ("I swallowed too too much!).

First, Bill at Wrapped in the Flag sent this regarding Pastor Ted and his "massage" from a male prostitute (what? No methamphetamine?).

Next, Attaturk presents us with Pastor Ted of the gay sex/illegal drug scandal uuuhhh...errrrr...."counseling" Mel Gibson? Says Attaturk:

I just don't think it's right that Ted is pushing Mel down to his knees.

Definitely NOT a situation where two minds are better than one, unless that one is Bush who I suspect needs someone to wipe his ass.

Dick Cheney Doesn't Need to Hear From Lowly American Citizens to Determine Policy

Attaturk at Rising Hegemon sums it up well:

Boy, here's a guy who really believes in the power of "democracy" he "claims" to be spreading:

Cheney said that even with pollsters predicting that Democrats would likely make gains in both houses of Congress Tuesday, voter sentiment would not influence Bush's Iraq policy.

"It may not be popular with the public — it doesn't matter in the sense that we have to continue the mission and do what we think is right. And that's exactly what we're doing," Cheney said. "We're not running for office. We're doing what we think is right."

>Cheney to his bosses, the American Voters GO, FUCK YOURSELVES!

What a Dick!

Rats: I'm Going to Miss The Event And Unless You Heard About It Elsewhere, So Will You

I heard last night that Amy Goodman, host of "Democracy Now" (shown on Free Speech and Link networks on Satellite and on the radio is various markets), appears today at the Old Labor Hall in beautiful downtown Barre.

She will be with her brother, David, a Vermont resident, to talk about issues and to highlight their latest book, "Static". But their older one, "Exception to the Rulers" is no lightweight tome.

More Soldiers Headed to Iraq As Bush (Finally?) Admits U.S.-Iraq War About Oil

Aren't we all just tickled peachy that Bush says he just love, love, loves Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney so they will both running things as usual (as in run not just to the ground, but hundreds of feet below it)?

Army Faces New Call-Ups
National Guard, Reserve brace for possible special deployments to Iraq to meet demand for troops.

And then there is this little filthy dirty ditty with Bush discussing oil and Iraq:

During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, President Bush and his aides sternly dismissed suggestions that the war was all about oil. "Nonsense," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld declared. "This is not about that," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.

Now, more than 3 1/2 years later, someone else is asserting that the war is about oil -- President Bush.

As he barnstorms across the country campaigning for Republican candidates in Tuesday's elections, Bush has been citing oil as a reason to stay in Iraq. If the United States pulled its troops out prematurely and surrendered the country to insurgents, he warns audiences, it would effectively hand over Iraq's considerable petroleum reserves to terrorists who would use it as a weapon against other countries.

"You can imagine a world in which these extremists and radicals got control of energy resources," he said at a rally here Saturday for Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.). "And then you can imagine them saying, 'We're going to pull a bunch of oil off the market to run your price of oil up unless you do the following. And the following would be along the lines of, well, 'Retreat and let us continue to expand our dark vision.' "

Bush said extremists controlling Iraq "would use energy as economic blackmail" and try to pressure the United States to abandon its alliance with Israel. At a stop in Missouri on Friday, he suggested that such radicals would be "able to pull millions of barrels of oil off the market, driving the price up to $300 or $400 a barrel."

Senator George Allen of Virginia Does NOT Treat Constituents Well

For those who missed it, Mike Stark who blogs at Calling All Wingnuts is a VA constituent of Allen's who attempted to ask Allen questions earlier this week and found himself, without any violence on his part, thrown INTO a plate glass window. Apparently you have to be a brown nose ass kissing yes man or woman to be allowed in George Allen's "inner macaca" circle.

WEYERS CAVE, Va. -- A liberal blogger who was manhandled by supporters of Sen. George Allen this week was handcuffed by authorities and escorted from another rally Saturday after an Allen backer claimed the man pushed him to the ground.

Mike Stark told The Associated Press that sheriff's deputies detained and released him. He was not charged.

Remember when free speech wasn't "zoned"?

Saddam Hussein Sentenced To Death By Hanging (Bush-Karl Rove's Election Week Surprise?)

Well, we knew this was coming, but when the decision was clearly set to occur just before the U.S. mid-term elections with the GOP scrambling to keep Republican control of both houses.. well... and with the Bushies' locking Baghdad down tight along with four provinces.

Former Iraqi dictator and two other co-defendants will be hanged for their role in a brutal crackdown nearly 25 years ago in Dujail.

Saddam should not be the only one indicted, tried, and punished, IMHO.

After all, like it or not, regardless of how Fox News has spun it, the very worst atrocities committed by Saddam occured while he was a "friend" of the U.S. government's. And all those Kurd deaths by "WMD"? The weapons/gas came from us. We sold it to him.

Oh, yeah, and Rumsfeld has a picture younger than that "nearly 25 years ago" in which he smiles and he warmly shakes Saddam's hand.

Maureen Dowd: Cheney & Rumsfeld, "A Wartime Love Story"

Thank you, MoDo. Snippet below, but to read the rest, visit here and read JurassicPork's excellent original commentary as well.

At the heart of every administration, there is one relationship above all others that shapes history. Ron and Nancy. Poppy Bush and James Baker. Billary. Cheney & Rummy.

W. is the hood ornament, but Cheney & Rummy are the chitty chitty bang bang engine of this administration. Their four-decade friendship stretches from Nixon to Bush II, from Vietnam to Vietnam II.

It’s a beautiful love story, really, even more touching than Ted Haggard, the evangelical preacher and Bush White House adviser, asking a male prostitute for crystal meth, or Borat putting a bag over the head of a squealing Pamela Anderson and carrying her off.

The country, the world, a growing number in their party, and some of the president’s own family may object to the star-crossed match of Cheney & Rummy, but the two men are secure in each other’s embrace. They’ve had tons of fun, from unmanning Colin Powell to unraveling the Geneva Conventions to undoing half a century of American foreign policy to unnerving the small Chesapeake Bay town of St. Michaels, Md., where they have bought weekend estates near each other.

Like some out-of-control manbot, Vice says they will continue “full speed ahead” in Iraq, no matter what voters say. “We’re not running for office,” he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “We’re doing what we think is right.” Damn the democracy — full speed ahead.

W. ratified the Cheney-Rummy mésalliance this week, saying they were doing “fantastic” jobs and vowing to stick with them. He said “the good thing about Vice President Cheney’s advice is, you don’t read about it in the newspaper after he gives it.” (How would he know?) Being discreet when you give disastrous advice: priceless.

Noting that Rummy had presided over Afghanistan and Iraq while overhauling the military, W. said he was “pleased with the progress we’re making.” (Insert your own punch line here.)

Rummy did have one other defender. The House majority leader, John Boehner, told Wolf Blitzer that it is the generals who should be blamed if the war is going badly. So now Republicans are trashing Democrats for undermining the troops even as they’re undermining the troops?

Mr. Bush will go down in history as an isolated, naïve president who was led by Cheney & Rummy, when he could have gotten better advice from his dad and wife.

In his new book, “State of Denial,” Bob Woodward sketches a scene in which an anxious first lady presses Andy Card for information about the war. Mr. Card says he can’t tell her classified information, and she says that W. won’t tell her that stuff, either. She confides her fear that Rummy is hurting her husband and wonders why he puts up with it.

Emphasis mine.

Can Dems Succeed Where Diebold Cheats? WaPo Says The Former Is Quite Possible in a Win of Both Houses of Congress

Can we call this a "pox on both the GOP-bought houses of Congress" yet?

Wow, this has been one of my favorite David S. Broder (with Dan Balz) pieces in WaPo in ages! Then keep reading for MORE good news.

Two days before a bitterly fought midterm election, Democrats have moved into position to recapture the House and have laid siege to the Senate, setting the stage for a dramatic recasting of the power structure in Washington for President Bush's final two years in office, according to a Washington Post analysis of competitive races across the country.

In the battle for the House, Democrats appear almost certain to pick up more than the 15 seats needed to regain the majority. Republicans virtually concede 10 seats, and a split of the 30 tossup races would add an additional 15 to the Democratic column.

The Senate poses a tougher challenge for Democrats, who need to gain six seats to take control of that chamber. A three-seat gain is almost assured, but they would have to find the other three seats from four states considered to have tossup races -- Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri and Montana.

In governors' races, Democrats are likely to emerge with the majority for the first time in 12 years. Five states are almost certain to switch parties, including the key battlegrounds of New York, Massachusetts and Ohio. Four races are too close to call, but only one of those seats -- in Wisconsin -- is held by a Democrat.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows some narrowing in the Democratic advantage in House races. The survey gives the Democrats a six-percentage-point lead nationally among likely voters asked which party they prefer for Congress. It was 14 points two weeks ago, but this remains a larger advantage than they have had in recent midterm elections.

Josh at Talking Points Memo points us to GOP strategist/watcher Charlie Cook who says "Man on Dog" Rick Santorum is D-E-A-D. This is apt since he's smelled dead for years!

The Senate is a very different situation and there are some very strange things going on.

In Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum is gone. While the margin in Ohio is not nearly as wide, it's very hard to see how Mike DeWine makes it back either.

The strange ones are Conrad Burns and Lincoln Chafee in Montana and Rhode Island, respectively. Both races are basically even, pretty remarkable considering how dismal their prospects looked just a couple weeks ago. While even is a bad place for a Republican to be going into Election Day in this kind of environment, both have some momentum at this point.

Conversely, George Allen and Jim Talent, are dead even as well, but with no momentum, and that is very, very dangerous under these circumstances. Talent/Republicans have a fabulous field organization in Missouri, if Talent pulls it out, it might be the ground game that does it, but this is very tough for both.

In Tennessee, while Democrats are boasting of a very strong African-American early voting program, this race really does appear to have slipped away from Democrats. Ijd be surprised to see Corker lose to Ford now.